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Not to highjack the thread but i have a question.
I'm thinking about applying to the University of the District of Columbia PD this week.

Does anyone have any experience working/interactng with them? Any pros or cons that you have seen/heard?
Also, I was wondering if special police officers are allowed to carry off-duty for personal protection? I live in VA if this makes a difference too.

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It's been a while since we sent any recruits through MPD's Academy ... like pre-2001. For the last few years we used FLETC, however I heard that we will soon have an MOU in place with MPD to put recruits through their academy again.

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We are OFFICIALLY no longer Special Police Officers of the Metropolitan Police Department. According to our new Chief of Police, Louis Cannon and DC Attorney General Peter Nickles, DCMR 6A and DCMR 10 allows the Office of Property Management to create it's own police force. Thus we are OFFICIALLY now sworn under DCMR 6A (same as MPDC) and DCMR 10 as opposed to DCMR 6A Chapter 11.

We are also now operating on the MPD radio channels and responding to calls for police service that are occuring in our vicinity (whether it's government property or not).

Our duties have always been far outside what a Special Police Officer Commission allowed, but no one in the past asked for the Attorney General's opinion; which is all it took to get us out from the stupid SOMB bs.

This just proves how stupid Chief Arnold Bracy and Chief Thomas Francis (the two Chiefs we had since DC Council officially classified us as 0083 Police Officers) were by requiring us to mantain SPO Commissions from MPDC that we never used other than carrying the card behind our Police Officer credentials which have always been issued by OPM by the authority of the Director of the Office of Property Management.

Sweet! Concurrent jusrisdiction or just near your properties?

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I've applied with them; actually been speaking with a few of their officers. I could handle the work, and the academy is regular metro PD's but their running standard is lax. The only hickup is it takes 12-18 mos to go thru the process. So, we wait.

But until then, I could work AU.

Orlando - IM me if you have a chance. Have a few au-specific questions.

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You do realize AU is alot more reactive compared to GWU PD. Basically lots of parking tickets being written. I looked into a part time gig with them when I worked at NNMC.

If your looking to go special, why not try for DC protective services police. Im sure DCPSDcop can give you the skinny with them.

We are no longer Special Police Officers of the Metropolitan Police Department.

We are also now operating on the MPD radio channels and responding to calls for police service that are occuring in our vicinity (whether it's government property or not).

Our duties have always been far outside what a Special Police Officer Commission allowed, but no one in the past asked for the Attorney General's opinion; which is all it took to get us out from the stupid SOMB bs.

This just proves how stupid some of our previous chiefs have been as they were requiring us to mantain SPO Commissions from MPDC that we never used other than carrying the card behind our Police Officer credentials which have always been issued by OPM by the authority of the Director of the Office of Property Management.

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When I see a guy who looks suspicious (asked me how to turn on his "new Ipod" that was scratched up like crazy and was carrying three laptop bags over his back on the street in the middle of a robbery spree where electronics were being targeted) I called MPD before calling UPD.

And all you accomplished was making sure that this guy wouldn't be stopped and identified. You call 311/911 and the call goes onto the dispatch board and is dispatched based upon its priority. A call for a suspicous person is pretty low level, so at times you might be looking at that being dispatched 30 mins to an hour after you call. And then once it is dispatched, if the MPD Officer who receives the run recognizes it as at GW, they will advise the dispatcher to notify GW Police anyway.

On the other hand, if you call GW Police, the call is likely to be dispatched much quicker than a 2D unit would be dispatched and the GW Police unit is probably much closer to the call and thereby might actually arrive while he is still in the area.

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The only issue that people really have is that UPD only has 7 weeks of training or something absurd like that. They should start a program IMMEDIATELY in my opinion where all officers who are new and any old ones who want to be armed should have to go through more training.

GW Police Officers go through 700+ hours of training, which equates to over 22 weeks. The 7 week figure that the GW Hatchet cited in that last article is the length of the Consortium of Universities Police Academy. GW cops go thru 7 weeks of Phase Training before the 7 weeks of Academy Training and then additional training after academy.

This is very similar method that federal agencies use (FLETC Mixed Basic Course was only 8 weeks until it was increased to 12 weeks a few years ago) wherein the academy is 12 weeks, however individual agencies provide additional training on their own.

And lastly, very little of police training is firearms related anyway. Most police training revolves around laws and criminal procedure. I beleive the average new recruit in a police department receives about 80 hours of firearms training, which is only 2 weeks.

And as far as the crime stats. You show your ignorance. The Cleary Act requires all Post Secondary Educational Institutions to post their crime stats on their website and publish them yearly in a crime report. The GW Hatchet reads the crime stats off the UPD website (which is updated daily) and then meets with Chief Stafford for the specifics. The GW Hatchet (which is an INDEPENDENT newspaper) then publishes what they feel is most entertaining and comical in their Crime Log. The university does not play with their crime stats, as that would be a serious crime and result in some hefty fines.

Another big problem that UPD does need to address is that they have purposely blurred the line between their police personnel and security personnel in order to make it appear as though they have a larger force than they actually do. They should take steps immediately to change the uniforms of their security personnel to something completely different than the police personnel. Most of the public outcry over this arming has to do with people thinking that the security officers (who are commonly referred to as "UPD Officers") will be the ones who are getting armed; which is not the case.

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HOW any police force can work without a firearm in the U.S these days is BEYOND me.with what I deal with and the fact I patrol residentials, commercial and transit areas, there is no FANTASY that I won't run into serious criminals,and I would not do this job- no matter what the pay, without one........

I talk to these guys and they all point out to me that they have all made arrests at one point in time or another where the guy has a firearm on him or a big blade. The problem is that the University controls what statistics are reported to the school run newspaper, and they only report the ones involving drunken behavior. If they started saying "oh yea, three kids were brought to the hospital for drinking... two were caught with booze in their rooms underage... and oh yea, we caught a guy walking around campus with a .45 who has a record of violence, but don't worry UPD doesn't need guns" I have a feeling that there would finally be a call for arming these men and women.

The only issue that people really have is that UPD only has 7 weeks of training or something absurd like that. They should start a program IMMEDIATELY in my opinion where all officers who are new and any old ones who want to be armed should have to go through more training.

All I know is that when I see a drunk person on campus I only call UPD. When I see a guy who looks suspicious (asked me how to turn on his "new Ipod" that was scratched up like crazy and was carrying three laptop bags over his back on the street in the middle of a robbery spree where electronics were being targeted) I called MPD before calling UPD.

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........Because of this general disdain and belief in rumors about misconduct (that as far as I know have never been upheld) I doubt that they are ever going to get guns because of this rampant student opposition (although I figure they will as soon as an incident happens and people end up dying... that is after they blame UPD for not being properly prepared.

HOW any police force can work without a firearm in the U.S these days is BEYOND me.with what I deal with and the fact I patrol residentials, commercial and transit areas, there is no FANTASY that I won't run into serious criminals,and I would not do this job- no matter what the pay, without one........

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Sorry,Decop989 - you are going to have to go "inside". Working a specialized dept myself ( Airport PD), we often get people who mistake the idea that we "don't do traditional policing" or a are some type of overglorified security guards 'cause our patches say "airport" or "transit", "port", or "college" - these people usually don't make it off probation,let alone the academy. I understand your dilema,believe me. but anytime you work as a LEO and have to put on a uniform, you're STILL expected to perform the job as well as your city copper or state copper counterparts,even IF they don't get the serious calls all the time.

You sound like you can still perform a decent days work, but you have to be realistic about your limitations. working as "special police " job ,will only mean security guard,and that won't satisfy you.but thinking that working a Campus cop job isn't going to entail a potential issue that would only happen on a city street? don't mislead yourself. There are alot of "investigator" positions, which require field work, but aren't the routine "traffic stop and radio call" work of a patrol officer. you can find them in state and federal positions.these will probably be type of LEO jobs you should aim for,as any uniformed patrol job is going to require you to be 100% physically.good luck.....

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Ever since I became an Intern for MPDC I have been much more willing to talk to these guys than other people are. I have become friends with three of them (two because I had to call UPD a few times for medical help for others and they were amazed that I was so friendly and talkative to them and a third because I approached him while he was on duty and just said hello).

The biggest problem with GWU's UPD force is that the student population seems to think that a lot of them are unprofessional. I have never once seen a UPD officer act in an unprofessional way, but everyone else that I know says that they are unprofessional because "a friend once told me that he saw a UPD officer drink with students/steal my beer/inappropriately touch a drunk girl." The only problem is that I feel that nobody who I would trust has ever actually seen as much with their own two eyes.

The fact is most of the student population just has a general disdain for police officers and their authority. If you go to work here you might meet a few students who want to become officers themselves and will be nice to you, as well as a few veterans who are nice to you. Most of the people will be rude and treat you like an idiot. Because of this general disdain and belief in rumors about misconduct (that as far as I know have never been upheld) I doubt that they are ever going to get guns because of this rampant student opposition (although I figure they will as soon as an incident happens and people end up dying... that is after they blame UPD for not being properly prepared.

I know that officers get a lot of disrespect in any jurisdiction, but unless you are trying to get a free Masters/BA I would not suggest working here. They are great officers, but even MPD officers working in the 7D get handshakes and thankful citizens coming up to them every now and then (I have seen it with my own two eyes). That is just something that you will probably get maybe once a year at most if you work here.